Many Artemisia species are cited by early herbalists including Theophrastus in the third century B.C (Einarson and Link, 1976), Pliny (Bostock and Riley, 1855-1857) and Dioscorides (Gunther, 1959) in the first century BC. Wormwood (probably the species A. judaica) is mentioned in the Bible (Rev 8:10, 11). In 340 AD, Ge Hong prescribed aerial part of Artemisia for the treatment of fever in the “Chinese hand book of prescriptions for emergency treatments” and in 1527, Li Shi Zhen, a Chinese herbalist/pharmacologists mentioned the use of huang hua hao (or yellow flower, later identified as A. annua) for treatment of children's fever and qinghao (A. apiacea) as a treatment for the disease now known as malaria.
The plant Artemisia annua (family: Asteraceae) produces a sesquiterpenoid lactone endoperoxide named artemisinin which is a promising antimalarial drug effective against Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax at nanomolar concentration. Artemisinins are active against Schistosoma mansoni and S. japonicum in-vitro and in-vivo in experiments in animals. These schistosomes, like malarial parasites, degrade haemoglobin and produce hemozoin. These compounds are also active against Leishmania major, Toxoplasma gondii and Pnenmocystic carinii in-vitro and against P. carinii in-vivo. Artemisinins have immunosuppressive activity and also potential anticancer activity. For these activities, the doses of artemisinin required are substantially higher than the dose for antimalarial activities. According to Meshnick et at., (1996) (Microbiological Reviews 6:301-315) the antimalarial endoperoxides including artemisinin, dihydroartemisinin and arteethers, are not likely to be useful for other therapeutic purposes except against malarial parasites.
Although artemisinin rapidly suppresses the activity of parasites like Plasmodium vivax and P. falciparum, problems with high rate of recrudescence (>10% recrudescence infections), short half life persist. Hence, there is a need to develop new drugs against quinolone resistant pathogenic bacteria. It is a known fact that clinically used antibacterial broad spectrum compounds such as quinolones which exhibit DNA gyrase activity of Mycobacterium sp. (causing tuberculosis), Haemophilus sp. and Haemophilus influenzae are gradually becoming ineffective due to the occurrence of mutatious in gyrase genes and their natural selection under continuous use of such drug. The compound α arteether developed as antimalarial drugs by Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, India and Central Institute of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Lucknow, India, after phase II clinical trial is a stable derivative of artemisinin. Earlier we have found a novel property of α-arteether as being effective against the gyr A mutant strains of E. coli but ineffective against wild type strains (U.S. Pat. No. 6,127,405). Also we have developed a strategic and novel composition comprising α arteether and nalidixic acid or quinolone drugs which is useful as an advanced generation drug to counter the resistance development itself and having a potential to be used in treating infectious diseases and in inhibiting the resistance developed due to mutation in the gyr A gene of bacteria, particularly in those cases where drug resistant strains are known to appear very frequently (U.S. Pat. No. 6,423,741). We have already reported a genotype ‘Jeevanraksha’ earlier yielding more than 1% artemisinin (Sushil Kumar, S Banerjee, S Dwivedi, M M Gupta, R K Verma, D C Jain, S P S Khanuja, A K Mathur, G D Bagchi, M Zehra, V K Mehta, A A Naqvi, S Paul, G Ram, M Ram, D Saikia, R S Sangwan, T R Santha Kumar, A K Shasany, M P Darokar, A K Singh, A Singh (1999) Registration of Jeevanraksha and Suraksha varieties of the antimalarial medicinal plant Artemisia annua. Jour. Med. Arom. Plant Sci. 21: 47-48.) and the method to increase yield through harvesting management (U.S. Pat. No. 6,393,763).
It is always beneficial to have diversity in genotypes in different background than a single genotype for commercial cultivation. With this objective a novel genotype was developed through a novel method of DNA marker assisted breeding.